ENSURE WASTE REMOVAL SERVICES IN SIYATHUTHUKA NOW!

We, the undersigned residents of Siyathuthuka in Emakhazeni  demand that the  Acting Municipal Manager ensures that refuse removal services resumes in Siyathuthuka.  The failure of the municipality to provide the service has given rise to illegal dumping of dead animals and refuse right in the front of our homes, making it an environmental hazard which is harmful to us and our children. The area has a lot of discarded face masks making it a health hazard during this corona virus pandemic. Given the above, we call on the Acting Municipal Manager,  Mr. Lucas Mamaleka to:

(i) Enforce s3(1) of the municipality’s draft waste management by-laws which places a duty on the municipality to ensure an efficient, affordable, economical and sustainable access to waste management services.

(ii) To deal with the issue of illegal dumping and ensure that all these sites are cleared as it is resulting in land pollution.

It is time to take back your power

Click here to see more from Parliament

Enough is enough! Residents and businesses across the City of Ekurhuleni are subjected to crippling electricity outages on a weekly basis.

In fact, the City of Ekurhuleni suffers from 1 570 unplanned power outages a day!

The city must get its house in order.

We, the residents of the City of Ekurhuleni call for the following immediate action to fix the situation:

  • The portfolio committee of COGTA in Parliament must investigate why the City of Ekurhuleni cannot provide proper electrical maintenance after hours due to exceeding the overtime allowance permitted.
  • The Committee must also ensure that the City of Ekurhuleni has enough qualified staff to deliver services.
  • The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) must conduct an immediate forensic audit of the Ekurhuleni Electricity Department in order to determine whether the Metro has transgressed any of its license requirements.
  • All vacant postswithin the Electricity Department must be filled immediately, as the Department is currently operating on a 70% staffing level.
  • All electricians and technicians must immediately provide “tools of trade” so that they can provide a service to the residents of City of Ekurhuleni.
  • The Parliamentary Portfolio Committees on COGTA, Energy and Public Enterprises must investigate the electricity crisiswithin the City of Ekurhuleni.
  • Eskom, insofar as it is responsible for the supply and maintenance of electricity to the metro, must fulfil its obligations fully and timeously.

Sign the petition to show your support.

Petition to remove MEC Lebogang Maile

The residents of Tshwane have suffered enough under ANC Gauteng Cooperative Governance MEC, Lebogang Maile!

The ANC’s MEC has played with the livelihoods of the residents of Tshwane for far too long. 

His illegal decision to place the City of Tshwane under administration is nothing but a poorly disguised attempt to take back, undemocratically, what the ANC had lost at the ballot box. 

When the matter went to the North Gauteng High Court, the Court laid the blame for the chaos in the Tshwane Council firmly at the feet of the ANC and EFF.

Besides the unlawfulness of his actions, the MEC has wasted taxpayers’ money on needless legal costs which could have been directed towards fixing critical service delivery issues in Tshwane.

Enough is enough! The persistent attempts to undermine the democratically elected DA-led government in Tshwane must end now. 

Sign our petition calling on Gauteng Premier, David Makhura, to fire MEC Maile immediately. 

MEC Maile is an embarrassment to the provincial government and should not be allowed to hold any public office.

Sign the petition.

IMPROVE BASIC SERVICE DELIVERY IN LEKWA LOCAL MUNICIPALITY NOW

We, the undersigned residents of Lekwa local municipality have gone far too long without basic service delivery from the municipality. The escalating Eskom debt the municipality has is severely affecting the quality of the services that is being delivered.  We are being load shed for hours on end because of exceeding the notified maximum demand from Eskom. Our water that is coming out of our taps is dirty and the roads we drive on is treacherous and endangering our lives.

Given the above, we call on the MEC of CoGTA, Mandla Msibi to follow through with placing the municipality under administration and also:

  1. Increase our Notified Maximum Demand as residents suffer in the winter months. Ensure the municipality sticks to the Eskom repayment as the related load shedding not only affects our daily lives but is damaging our appliances and spoiling our food.
  2. Improve the quality of our water that is coming out of the taps from the treatment plants and fix the potholes in our towns and residences.

Lift the national lockdown, now!

We the undersigned, are deeply concerned about the prospect of between 3 and 7 million job losses in South Africa, as estimated by the National Treasury. Given that places of worship have been re-opened, it makes no sense to keep restaurants, hair salons, gyms, etc, closed. In addition, the motivation by Minister Dlamini-Zuma in her court papers exposes the fact that the tobacco and cigarette ban is not based on scientific evidence. We call on the Government to allow all businesses to open, while adhering to safety measures and to immediately lift the ban on tobacco products.

  1. To urgently lift the prohibition of restaurants, hair salons, gyms etc, from been re-opened.
  2. We call on the ban of tobacco products to be lifted.
  3. Government should allow all businesses to open, while adhering to safety measures and to immediately lift the ban on tobacco products

Lift the ban on recreational fishing for subsistence

The Democratic Alliance (DA) recognises the desperate plight of subsistence fishers who are struggling to survive under the lockdown. The DA urgently calls on the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Forestry and Fisheries, Barbara Creecy:

  1. To urgently lift recreational fishing restrictions allowing for subsistence fishers to feed themselves and their families.
  2. For increased transparency in the allocation of small-scale fishing rights across provinces.
  3. To review existing fishing categories as per the Marine Living Resources Act for inclusion of a subsistence fishing category that addresses the issue of subsistence fishers who have only been able to qualify for recreational fishing permits.

Residents of eThekwini have said NO to high tariff increases for rates and utilities and NO to increases and bonuses for staff

Your DA eThekwini team say NO

Ethekwini municipality has informed the DA that no planned changes are being made to the municipality’s staff salary, incease or bonus structure for the 2020/2021 financial year. This despite the global Covid-19 pandemic hammering the local economy!

Staff costs will increase with 9.5% which is R1,1 billion in the next financial year!

Also thirteenth cheques for staff remain in the budget to the tune of R600 million, which is in addition to a staff increase of 6.25% and performance bonuses.

In the real world, beyond sheltered government employment, people are taking pay cuts and businesses and families are desperately trying to find ways to make ends meet.

Very little relief has been offered by the eThekwini Municipality to those struggling and tariffs are set to again go up by exorbitant amounts.

What can eThekwini residents do?

1) Find your councillor by clicking on this link

2) Contact your councillor and ask them if they have committed to voting in your best interest. Every DA councillor in eThekwini will do so.

3) Fill in your details on the right and tell your councillor how you feel. We will ensure it sent to the correct councillor.

4) Hold the city leadership and councillors accountable by sharing and following updates on this matter!

The law says that the tabling of budgets must be open to the public and the DA have requested information as to how the municipality plans to do this as the meeting is online. If you can, tune in and watch the meeting on the 28th!

End the economic lockdown now, Mr President

The nation-wide economic lockdown we all once supported is now costing more lives than it can hope to save. Last week, DA Leader, John Steenhuisen, wrote to President Ramaphosa urging him to end the nation-wide economic lockdown and, most recently, he announced that the DA would be taking court action.

Please show your support by co-signing DA Leader, John Steenhuisen’s, letter to President Ramaphosa urging him to end the economic lockdown (and the economic crisis it is creating) and allow South Africans to go safely back to work.

Dear President Ramaphosa,

We all want South Africa and her people to succeed, and it is heart-breaking to see so many suffering in these difficult times. So, to save lives and livelihoods, the undersigned South Africans and I urge you to end the economic lockdown now and allow South Africans to go safely back to work.

The economic lockdown is doing more harm than good and will cost more lives than it can possibly save. It is generating long-term poverty which will reduce South Africa’s life-expectancy and destroy millions of lives. National Treasury estimates unemployment will go up by 30-70% – that means adding between three and seven million MORE people to the millions who were already desperate for work before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

South Africa needs to get back to work, but with safety measures in place to slow the spread of the virus. The economic lockdown must end immediately and we must help South Africans go safely back to work with these protocols in place:

  1. Roll out wide-spread, randomised testing to identify where the virus is flaring up – then enforce localised lockdowns to contain it.
  2. Put protocols for mask-wearing, handwashing and screening in place.
  3. Encourage or assist those at high-risk to isolate themselves.
  4. Provide a reasonable set of safety regulations for businesses.

The purpose of the economic lockdown was to delay the virus spreading, not to eliminate the virus. Specifically, the purpose was to buy time to gather healthcare resources and prepare hospitals. It is impossible to eliminate the virus. Even if we lock down for a year, the virus will still be there when we go back to work. A peak in cases is INEVITABLE in the coming months.

The current Level 4 is as bad as Level 5 was, with massive military deployment, civilian abuses, and no specified end date. It is one of the world’s longest and harshest lockdowns. Unlike other governments with long lockdowns, the South African government is not providing the safety net to poor people and small businesses, so millions of people are starving and hundreds of thousands of businesses are going bankrupt.

Mr President, I ask that you trust us all and justify the rules as the decisions made by government have been secretive and irrational, with nothing to do with public safety or coronavirus.

If the government doesn’t end this economic lockdown, people will end it for them. In fact, this is already happening. When rules are irrational, people tend to break them – not because the people are bad, but because the rules are bad. The current lockdown is forcing poor people to choose between going hungry or breaking the law. It is giving them no choice but to break the law.

Mr President, I urge you to face up to the serious situation confronting us: end the nation-wide economic lockdown and allow South Africans to go safely back to work.

You’ll know that we have already instructed our lawyers to challenge the discriminatory use of the coronavirus emergency relief fund. It isn’t right for government to exclude citizens from this relief based on their, or their employer’s, race and other arbitrary criteria.

We also petitioned the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make any funds obtained from them by the South African government conditional on non-racial use, or any other arbitrary criteria.

And most recently, our lawyers filed papers in the High Court challenging the rationality of three separate lockdown-related issues: the night curfew, the ban on e-commerce and the restriction on exercise hours.

Together with the undersigned South Africans, I believe that all three of these decisions should be immediately reversed, as there are no rational justifications for a military-enforced curfew, a restriction on e-commerce business and a limited 3-hour window for exercise.

We also wish to challenge the constitutionality of having the National Command Council take these irrational decisions as they please, without any checks and balances! If we let them get away with this, Mr President, our democracy will find itself on a very slippery slope.

President Ramaphosa, we call on you to listen to our concerns and trust us.

Every single business that can safely open must be allowed to open NOW so that people can get back to work and feed their families. That is the only way we will ensure that, once we have defeated this virus, we have a country left to rebuild.

 

Regards,

John Steenhuisen
DA Leader

Petisie om te keer dat IMF Koronavirus-noodlening diskrimineer

Nadat ons hofstukke geliasseer het in die Hooggeregshof om dringend ʼn stokkie te steek voor die gebruik van BBSEB-status, ras, geslag of ouderdom  vir hulpverlening, het ons ook die bron van meeste van die hulpfonds-geld, die Internasionale Monetêre Fonds (IMF) genader.

Aangesien die meerderheid van die geld in die hulpfondse verkry word uit ʼn lening van die IMF, het die DA hierdie internasionale liggaam versoek om die optrede van ons regering te veroordeel en opdrag te gee wat die gebruik van IMF geld op ʼn diskriminerende wyse te verbied.

Nadat ons hofstukke ingedien het in die Hooggeregshof om dringend ʼn stokkie te steek voor die gebruik van BBSEB-status, ras, geslag of ouderdom vir hulpverlening, het ons ook die bron van meeste van die hulpfonds-geld, die Internasionale Monetêre Fonds (IMF) genader.

Aangesien die meerderheid van die geld in die hulpfondse verkry sal word uit ʼn lening van die IMF, het die DA hierdie internasionale liggaam versoek om die optrede van ons regering te veroordeel en instruksies uit te reik wat die gebruik van IMF-geld op ʼn diskriminerende wyse verbied.

Ons sal nie sulke onetiese gedrag duld nie!

Die ANC se besluit om hierdie geld slegs vir hulpverlening aan besighede wat voldoen BBSEB-stadaarde aan te wend, in hierdie tyd van nasionale ekonomiese krisis, is verkeerd. Die virus diskrimineer nie op grond van ras of geslag nie, en dit is onverdedigbaar dat die regering op hierdie wyse diskrimineer wanneer hulle besluite neem oor wie hul hulp verdien of nie verdien nie.

Of ʼn besigheidseienaar swart of wit, manlik of vroulik is, het geen uitwerking op die werkers wat hierdeur geraak word nie!

Besighede wat besit word deur wit eienaars het ook swart werknemers, wat families het om te onderhou. Deur lewensbelangrike staatshulp te weerhou van hierdie besighede word lyding nie net veroorsaak vir die eienaars nie maar ook vir hierdie families, wat sonder hulp sal wees indien die besigheid misluk.

Teken nou hierdie petisie wat ʼn beroep doen op die IMF om op te tree en die Suid-Afrikaanse regering opdrag te gee om NIE IMF-lenings te gebruik op ʼn wyse wat diskrimineer nie.

Ons moet saam staan om soveel lewens sowel as lewensmiddele in hierdie Koronavirus pandemie te red.

Teken die petisie.

Petition to stop coronavirus emergency aid discrimination

Kliek hier om die petisie in Afrikaans te sien/teken

After
filing papers in the High Court to urgently prevent the unlawful use of B-BBEE status, race, gender or age as criteria for relief or assistance at this tough time, the DA has approached the source of most of the relief funding – the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

As the majority of these relief funds are set to come from a loan obtained from the IMF, the DA calls on this international body to condemn this unjust behaviour by the South African government and instruct it to stop using IMF monies in a way that discriminates.

We will not stand for this unethical behaviour!

The ANC government’s choice to use this funding to only support B-BEEE compliant companies, at a time of national economic crisis, is wrong. The virus does not discriminate on the basis of race or gender, for example, and it is indefensible that government should do so when deciding who is deserving of their help and who is not.

Whether a business owner is black or white, male or female, has no bearing on which employees are affected!

White-owned businesses have black employees, who in turn support families. By deliberately denying these businesses critical government relief, it is not just the owner of the business, but indeed these families, who will suffer should the business fail.

Sign this petition calling on the IMF to act now: direct the South African government to NOT use its loan financing in a way that furthers discrimination.

We must help save as many lives and livelihoods as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.